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Oil Vacuum Cleaners & BMWs

Along with perhaps the neatest and most accurate system for checking
and adjusting tire pressure on the planet, German gas stations have a
special self-service vacuum cleaner "SB-Staubsauger" that eliminates
much of the mess of changing the oil.  (Perhaps American gas stations
do too, but until recently I was too poor to consider the idea. :-)
This device has a long thin anteater-like hose you stick down the
dipstick pipe which then sucks out the old oil from the crankcase.

I used one to slurp the oil from my 93 318i (E36 body, old M40 engine)
and was able to remove the specified 4 liters of oil.  I was wondering
however: Do these vacuum cleaners do a good job removing the old oil?
Would a stiff tube stuck down the dipstick pipe get close enough to
the bottom of the oil pan?

- -John

- -- 
John Firestone, Alfred Wegener Institut   [email protected]
 fuer Polar- und Meeresforschung             +49 (471) 4831 174 
Postfach 120161, D-27515 Bremerhaven          ..  ...  .... 149 (fax)
GERMANY
         "... There is always a well-known solution to
          every human problem - neat, plausible and wrong."
                - H.L. Mencken, The Divine Afflatus